She pulled her knees up close to her chest and sat as quietly as she could, watching a family that belonged to her but wasn’t hers at all in any way that made sense. She cast the blame on Walter, on the man who stood in the sunshine calling Gavin “Dad.” If he hadn’t fallen in love with Hallie. If he hadn’t betrayed her. A conversation from long ago floated across the air of the past. Walter telling her how he had always wanted a family like the Donohues, how when he was a child he’d lain in the bunk bed in his dad’s apartment or in the pullout couch at his mom’s guest house behind her friend’s house, and dreamed of a family just like Lena’s. He’d made them up, he’d said, and then found them living on the banks of the May River in South Carolina. Now maybe, just maybe, none of this had anything to do with love but with Walter finding and needing what he’d missed in childhood, with believing in a fantasy.

But then again, Colleen thought, as the heat of the morning mixed with the flame of anger, if that was true he would have just stuck with Colleen. So yes, love had something to do with it. He chose the second daughter. Her hands gripped the newspaper so tightly that it tore, the newsprint bleeding black on her damp palms.

Regret, she discovered, tasted metallic and bright, like biting onto a piece of tinfoil. She wanted to cry but she didn’t dare—what if one of them looked over and saw her? She stood up quietly, wanting to sneak back into the house, back to her computer and her e-mails and her quiet world.

It wasn’t fair, really. Walter and Hallie were the betrayers and yet they were the happy ones? It wasn’t supposed to work that way. But not much worked the way it was “supposed” to work, because if that were true, her dad would be sharp and bright, playing trivia games at the pub and bantering about local politics instead of being confused about day and time and place.

“Aunt Lena,” Rosie’s voice called out just as Colleen stood to enter the house. The child ran full bore toward Colleen, her arms out for a hug that was half a lawn away.

Escape was not an option.

Colleen received Rosie’s hug with her own. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Daddy is letting us skip art camp today and taking us to the water park in Savannah. Wanna come?”

“Where’s your mom?” Colleen glanced around.

Rosie lifted her first finger and crooked it, wiggling it to draw Colleen near. She whispered, “She’s doing things for that party that’s a secret.”